FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag: August 30, 2025

Hey, and welcome to this week’s mailbag! Matt Martell is on a well-deservedvacation, so I’m piloting issues in his stead. Matt picked a fairly good time to get some R&R; with a couple of month left within the season, the playoff discipline is mainly set. As Michael Baumann famous in his piece yesterday, “there has not been a playoff race so settled this early within the season as this 12 months’s Nationwide League. No less than not previously 12 seasons. There’s all the time been somebody with some hope in every league, even within the two-Wild Card rounds, and particularly in that hateful COVID-necessitated 16-team bracket from 2020. Not this 12 months within the NL. Barely, this 12 months, within the AL.” Coming into play on Friday, the Reds trailed the Mets by 4 video games for the ultimate NL Wild Card spot; their playoff odds sat at a paltry 4.4%. The Junior Circuit didn’t supply rather more intrigue; the Royals, sitting three video games again of the Mariners for the third Wild Card in that league, had playoff odds of simply 12.6% because the lengthy weekend loomed.

However that doesn’t imply there’s no enjoyable available. Kyle Schwarber hit 4 residence runs in a single sport this week! Jonah Tong and Payton Tolle made their main league debuts! There’s Hello-Chew aplenty! And whereas we mainly know who can be taking part in October baseball, each of the West divisions stay unsettled.

Your questions this week don’t particularly concern the playoff race, although two of them contain key gamers on groups that hope to make deep postseason runs. We’ll additionally zoom out to ponder what number of groups might end .500, in addition to the way forward for public pitching evaluation. Earlier than we do, although, I’ll remind you all that whereas anybody can submit a query, this mailbag is unique to FanGraphs Members. When you aren’t but a Member and wish to preserve studying, you may join a Membership right here. It’s the easiest way to each expertise the location and assist our workers, and it comes with a bunch of different nice advantages. Additionally, if you happen to’d wish to ask a query for an upcoming mailbag, make sure to ship us an electronic mail at mailbag@fangraphs.com.